AUSTRALIA
Foreign interns restricted
Foreigners have been banned from working as interns for members of parliament, a Senate spokesman said yesterday, in a reform apparently aimed at blocking Chinese prying. The program placing young people in a much-prized position working for a federal legislator for three months had been open to all nationalities, as long as the applicant did not have a criminal record. The spokesman declined to comment on what prompted the alteration. The Financial Times in September last year reported that a New Zealand citizen who had previously interned at an Australian parliamentary committee had links to a Chinese military spy school, prompting a review of the intern system, which concluded that standards should be bought in line with the rest of the government. Chinese students had often applied to the program and many worked as interns over the years.
AUSTRALIA
PNG, Solomons ink deal
Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Solomon Islands on Wednesday signed onto a joint undersea Internet cable project, funded mostly by Australia, that forestalls plans by Chinese telecom Huawei Technologies to lay the links itself. Australia is to pay two-thirds of the project cost of A$136.6 million (US$100.9 million) under the deal, signed on a visit to Brisbane by Solomon Islands Prime Minister Rick Houenipwela and PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill. “We spend billions of dollars a year on foreign aid and this is a very practical way of investing in the future economic growth of our neighbors in the Pacific,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters. The project, for which Australian telecom Vocus Group is building the cable, is to link the two nations to the Australian mainland, besides connecting the Solomons capital Honiara with the archipelago’s outer islands.
CHINA
MeToo fells professor
Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou has suspended a prominent primatologist in a victory for the nation’s slow-building #MeToo movement. The university yesterday announced that it would suspend Zhang Peng (張鵬) and revoke his honorary titles after confirming two complaints from female students. It did not disclose the allegations, but said it had “zero tolerance” for teacher misconduct and would safeguard students’ legal rights. Zhang held visiting positions at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Kyoto, and had been inducted into the Chang Jiang national fellowship program. The #MeToo discussion has drawn in Chinese state media, including the People’s Daily, which urged schools to listen to “young people’s voices” and address complaints without being evasive.
UNITED STATES
Python found in hard drive
A passenger with a python hidden inside an external hard drive was stopped from boarding a Florida plane headed to Barbados. The Miami Herald on Sunday reported that officers screening luggage at Miami International Airport found an “organic mass” inside a checked bag. A bomb expert then examined the bag and discovered the live snake in the hard drive, Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Sari Koshetz said, adding that the snake was “obviously not an imminent terrorist threat,” but its interception prevented a possible wildlife threat. The passenger was fined and the snake was taken into custody by Fish and Wildlife Services.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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